What: All Issues :
Family Planning :
Abortion :
H.R. 4691. Abortion Service Refusals/Vote on Rules of Debate on a Bill Which Jeopardizes Abortion Rights By Allowing
Both Health Care Providers to Refuse to Perform an Abortion and Insurance Companies to Reject Payment for Abortions.
(2002 house Roll Call 410)

Who:
All Members

To find out how your Members of Congress voted on this bill, use the form on the right.

H.R. 4691. Abortion Service Refusals/Vote on Rules of Debate on a Bill Which Jeopardizes Abortion Rights By Allowing
Both Health Care Providers to Refuse to Perform an Abortion and Insurance Companies to Reject Payment for Abortions.

Prior to floor consideration of legislation, a rule must be adopted to set parameters on House debate. Rules are drafted by the House Rules Committee, an arm of the majority party leadership. The subject of this vote was a rule governing debate on a bill that would enable hospitals and other health care providers to refuse performing abortions and would also permit insurance companies to reject payment for abortions. In the view of Progressives, the bill would compromise a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion and they opposed the rule based on their objections to the underlying legislation. Especially in sparsely populated areas, Progressives argued, there may be a limited number of health care facilities able to perform an abortion; if those facilities were exempt from conducting abortions, women in those areas would likely have to travel great distances to receive the medical procedure. The rule was adopted on a 229-194 vote.